Oh but I’ve been a terrible blogger this month. Terrible.
I’m not going to make any excuses because that would be totally pretending
people actually give a shit, which you know, it’s just a blog
and I’m pretty sure nobody does. I am however going to spend a quick few
minutes right now talking at you about a book I read a couple of weeks ago that
I totally should have already reviewed and haven’t because I’m terrible.

I don’t mean to be terrible, obvs. Sometimes you just need
to switch off your brain and watch Pretty Little Liars and
rewatch House and do a happy dance over all the
Klaine in season 6 of Glee, you know?
(always such a sucker for the pretty boys in love.) I’ve been all about the
television in July. I blame Netflix really, it’s just too easy to watch episode
after episode after episode. I wonder how many collective hours have been lost
to binge-watching since Netflix became a thing? It’s a thing both terrible and fabulous.

I haven’t just laid in my
bed watching American tv shows and stagnating though, I promise. There’s also
been house-hunting (both terrifying and exciting) and weddings (beautiful, with
books as favours, books as favours) and birthdays
(always fun times) and all manner of other fun stuff. We hired out a beach hut
for my Mum’s 60th the weekend before last which was all kinds of
glorious and segues quite nicely into the whole actual point of this post.

Which is this rather excellent book that people really ought
to be reading.

It’s called The Beach Hut
(I know, and I didn’t even do that intentionally. SERENDIPITY) and it’s by the
marvellous Cassandra Parkin who wrote The Summer We All Ran Away
which I read and loved last year. First things first, you can get hold of a copy of The Beach Hut right now, and you
should because it’s really really good. Really good.

S’about a brother and sister, Finn and Ava, who build an
(illegal?) beach hut on the Cornish coast, much to the chagrin of the landlord
of the local pub, Donald. Finn and Ava have this backstory that makes your
heart hurt, Donald’s a bit messed up –his wife has died and he’s really not at
all sure how to handle his teenage daughter, and she in turn has stuff of her
own going on – it’s a book about life I think,
really and the whole thing is actually kind of beautiful.

In a similar way to The Summer We All Ran Away
(again, grab a copy because holy smokes so good), The Beach Hut moves between the past and present pretty much
chapter by chapter. I loved this with The Summer We All Ran Away
and I love it again here. It’s quite a popular narrative device at the moment
it seems, the split timeline. I am reading so many books that tell me what’s
going on via then and now. Sometimes
it works and sometimes it doesn’t. This is one of those times that it
absolutely does. It also moves really seamlessly between the viewpoint of this
character and that and lets be real here, all these different voices and all
these different times and all these threads to all these stories. It could
quite easily have been a shitstorm. It’s not though, it works, and it works
really really well.

Also also, Cassandra Parkin has a knack for creating a cast
of characters that you believe in and relate to and really freaking care about. I mean, it, the people in this book, I just love
them so damn hard. Finn, I think, is the one I love the most, with his attitude
and his all-encompassing love for his sister and his sense of adventure and his
book of fairytales. I would like him to be my boyfriend. WHOOPS DID I SAY THAT
OUT LOUD? Also, Alicia: Cassandra Parkin is absolutely bang on with her portrayal
of mixed up teenage girl who wants to be simultaneously child and adult and her
relationship with her Dad is just so bittersweet – that’s a relationship that I
understand so well, the fragile one between father and daughter as daughter
moves beyond ‘little girl’ and into something else entirely. I am grateful
every day for the fact that my Dad and I got through that time (relatively)
unscathed. It’s not just that relationship that’s so on point here though you
know? The Beach Hut is a clever exploration of
relationships and of love: sibling, familial, romantic and it draws you in and
holds you as the story slowly unravels and HOLY SMOKES does it unravel. There’s
some stuff going on here that will grab you like an undercurrent and throw you
sideways. In a good way, not in a seawater in your face feel like your drowning
kind of way. Maybe that was a bad metaphor; it sounded better in my head. Anyway.
What I am trying to say is that there’s a sense of
immediacy to Parkin’s writing which I absolutely adore; I can not get enough of
her words and you know, I totally love it when a book grabs me and holds me
like that, makes me feel like I’m in another place. That’s what this book does.

Fun fact that I also really love: I read that the beach that
this book centres around is based on Perranporth in Cornwall. Yep, that totally makes me do a
happy dance. I love Perranporth. I’ve spent many
a happy hour on that beach, drinking rose lemonade and reading and there used
to be a restaurant just off the beach called The Tin Fin that
did the best calamari I ever tasted. I don’t think it’s there now which is a
shame. Anyway, I digress. This is a gorgeous book, I loved it and I really can’t
wait to see what Cassandra does next.

Here I am, endlessly annoyed that Goodreads
does not have the half star option. 3 or 4 stars? WHICH WAY TO GO?

I absolutely loved Rosamund Lupton’s debut
novel Sister, as in could not put it down to
even eat, read it in one sitting and promptly shoved it in the faces of
everybody I knew. I loved it. I
loved it so much that when her second novel Afterwards
didn’t measure up I kind of wanted to cry a little bit. I had wanted to love it
so very badly, and just didn’t. & what a shame, I thought, if Rosamund was
just a one hit wonder. Didn’t stop me though, from doing a happy dance earlier
this year when I heard that her third novel was due for publication in the
summer. That goes to show I guess just how much I really did enjoy Sister – enough that not even a disappointing second novel
could dampen my excitement at the revelation of Something New.

The Quality of Silence was published last Thursday; I started it last week and finished it last
night. &, well, I don’t know what to tell you. Let’s place it, I think,
somewhere between not-as-good-as-Sister but
not-as-disappointing-as-Afterwards.

Let’s say, that actually, I really liked
it. It’s just, I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to like it, and that makes
me sad.

Probably I shouldn’t have been excited
about it as I was; probably I shouldn’t have got caught up in all the
pre-publication excitement (this book was everywhere I looked, if you missed it
then clearly you live on Mars); probably I should have thought to myself ‘now Josephine
remember how you felt the last time,’ but I didn’t. I did none of those things.
I bought into the crazy and I got caught up in all the ‘SISTER WAS SO GOOD OMG
NEW ROSAMUND LUPTON’ thus setting myself up for disappointment.

That’s totally my fault though, because
this book was Good. It was good. It was
chilling and haunting and very well written – Lupton’s writing is extremely
evocative and her desecriptions of the desolate bleakness of an Alaskan winter
made me cold to my bones – figuratively speaking not actually: I read this in
plus 30 degree temperatures last week, the only thing would that would have
made me cold to my bones would have been an ice bath. It’s fast paced but
slow-moving and it made me feel kind of…quiet. I don’t know what that means.
WHY CAN I NEVER DO WORDS?! It’s a desolate fragile kind of a book I think, it’s
cold and lonely and isolating, much like Alaska
I guess which, well, it’s pretty bleak because winter in Alaska is not a thing you go into unprepared. Like, ever. It is the very opposite of A Nice Time. It is darker than a dark thing and colder than a cold thing and really, not a place you take a ten year old with just some clothes you got from Go Outdoors or some such. BE PREPARED.

The problem was, that in the beginning at least, it
just didn’t grab me. When I read I kind of want to get lost for a while, I want
the real world to fade away into nothingness, so that the only world that
exists is the one within the pages. That totally happened with Sister. It didn’t seem to be happening here. I mean, when I
was reading it, I liked it. The writing is good, and the story engaging, but,
when I had to stop reading I was kind of fine with that and I wasn’t itching to
go back to it. Example: I was babysitting on Saturday night. Babysitting is
always excellent reading time; I knew the girls would all be in bed for 8.30,
which gave me approx. 4 hours of uninterrupted book. I could totally have
finished this baby, I should have finished it with time to spare. But I didn’t.
I took my iPad instead and watched a few episodes of season 6 of House – the
Huddy buildup, you remember, be still my heart
- I guess that says it all doesn’t it. I decided to rewatch an old tv show
rather than finish this book and I was very sad about that fact. You don’t even
know much I wanted to love it.

(Lookit them. Still not over it, will never be over it. 'I always want to kiss you.' BRB sobbing forever.)

And then - back to the review despite the distraction of Hugh Laurie and his face - it was also pretty unrealistic. I
mean, I’ve watched Ice Road Truckers – everyone’s watched Ice Road Truckers,
right? It’s not just me – and I know that driving those mahoosive trucks across
frozen Alaska
is not easy. You don’t just rock up in Alaska
one day and think, yep, I’m gonna drive a truck across a frozen lake now, catch
you later. Unless it’s Top Gear. That’s
just not a thing that happens. You can’t just grab a big fuck off truck and go
for it you know? People die doing this
job, people with actual years of experience and knowledge die. I
don’t see how, then, Yasmin could just hop on a plane from England with
her ten year old Deaf daughter, harness a truck and set off in these awful
conditions across a frozen country. & I know that sometimes you have to
suspend the belief and I get that people will be saying ‘but it was
so beautifully written, so haunting and emotional and gripping and tense so why
does that tiny little detail matter’ but it does
because without that tiny little detail the whole thing falls apart and that
tiny little detail, well, I couldn’t get past it.Perhaps it’s me – and I’m not going to lie, I
don’t even know how to open my bonnet. I can’t change a trye, I’ve never
even attempted an oil change and I only park in car park spaces that I can
drive straight through, I’m not driving across any kind of frozen anything in
the dark – but I just, it didn’t feel real, that
Yasmin would attempt it, never mind manage it and it bugged me the whole way
through.

All of that said though, and despite the
fact that the first 40 percent of the book took me almost a week to drag myself
through, I read the second 60 percent in two hours last night. Two hours. I don’t know if it was my state of mind, if I was
just in a better place for this story, or whether the book just got that much better, but it was like something magically
slotted into place and I was turning pages and my heart was racing and I just
thought this, this is what I wanted from this book. I even did Ruby's sign for hurrah, I was just that pleased about it. I mean, the whole Yasmin driving this truck through an endless night still
niggled at me, but less so somehow because everything else was so much more vivid. The descriptions, of it being so cold that your eyes
closed shut, of the howling winds and the snow that could be knee deep in
minutes made me snuggle further under my duvet and those two blue headlights
that Yasmin can always see in her rearview mirror, slowing and stopping
whenever she does but always staying the same distance away made my heart
actually race. Suspense, that’s what Lupton is good at, that’s why Sister was so epically good and perhaps why this book took
so long to get going: the set-up andthe
back story, it was nowhere near as gripping as this race (chase) away from the
unknown towards God even knows what.

It’s kind of funny actually, because even
once the book gets going, even when I was flying through it with my heart in my
mouth it still wasn’t an ‘in your face’ kind of thriller,it was more….quietly compelling. Ooh, I like
that, yep, that’s what we’ll go with: quietly compelling: layer upon layer of
slowly building tension, the almost-terror of being utterly utterly alone and
utterly utterly helpless and desperately aware that nobody will ever hear your
calls for help is never quite articulated but the whole thing is quietly
chilling all the same AND IT'S SO GOOD. Nothing particularly dramatic really happens the whole
way through and yet still you find your hands curling into fists and your
breath catching, just a little bit. There’s a lot to be said for what goes
unsaid here: the isolation, the fear, the way everything that wasn’t inside
that cab with them felt like a threat, it was that that built the tension;
Lupton’s incredibly atmospheric writing rather than car chases and gun fights
and loud confrontation. It was quiet, because Alaska is quiet and Ruby
is quiet and it was so so effective.

There’s also this really lovely secondary
story of Yasmin’s relationship with her daughter, Ruby. Ruby’s deaf and
communicates using Sign Language or an app on her laptop that converts her typed
words into speech and vice versa and you want to know a thing? It’s really
difficult to talk using sign language when you’re in the darkest place in the
world. Yasmin and Ruby’s relationship is complicated and touching: Ruby’s
obviously much more comfortable with being Deaf than her mother is, and the way
they quietly lock horns over Yasmin’s need for Ruby to ‘use her words’ and ruby's reluctance to use her 'mouth voice' at all made my
heart hurt. Beautifully done Rosamund Lupton, high five.

I was a teeny bit
disappointed in the ending. It felt rushed and it wasn’t what I expected and I
don’t know, I mean I guess I had major trouble suspending reality with this
book, because I had exactly the same issue with the Big Twist as I did with the
whole Ice Road Trucker element: it was just a bit too far-fetched, it went just
a tiny step too far what with – oh, actually that would be a spoiler wouldn’t
it. Imma shut up about that.

(Explain to me though how I can read books about
post-apocalyptic futures, or about magic and dragons and faeries and trees that
come alive and not even question the reality of the situation even one time but
I struggle with a book where someone has to drive a truck across a lake. What is wrong in my brain?!)

Anyway, in a nutshell, this still is no Sister but as long as you go into it knowing that then I
think it’s defo worth a read and since it's out now, you can go grab a copy.

I absolutely do not want to be at work today. I want to be
home, watching Wimbledon. Today is a good day
on Centre Court:
Venus and Serena, Andy Murray, Roger Federer. Oh but how I wish I was not at
work. Le sigh. I am at work though, and as such I shall try to cheer myself up
by talking about books.

So. Last week Jen created The Time and Place Book Tag over
on her YouTube channel.

You can watch her video and find out what it’s all about here and you should because Jen is awesome.

If you can’t do that til later,
then that’s cool: in a nutshell, the tag is basically what it says – an excuse
to talk about ten books that remind you of a time and/or a place. Because that’s
totally a thing, right? We all have those books that remind us of this holiday
or that break-up, being that age or friends with that person. Books that you
only have to hear the title of to be transported back to a whole other time or
place, even if that’s not necessarily a good thing. & because Jen tagged
me, these are mine.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was the last
present my boyfriend bought for me before he passed away in 2005. He
pre-ordered it from Amazon and I had no idea, it just turned up on release day,
by which point he was really super sick and I remember opening it and him
smiling at me and my heart feeling like it had been ripped right out of my
chest. The book was released on July 16th and he died on the 30th
so it was all pretty grim. I remember him sleeping on the sofa because we
didn’t have a tv in our bedroom and he was too sick to move far, and me making
a bed out of cushions and lying on the lounge floor. I read this book and
watched him sleep and I swear to God, I’m not even being a dramatic fangirl
when I say that Harry Potter saved my life. I would not have got through that
summer if it weren’t for this book. I wouldn’t. I read it over and over, it was
the only book I could face looking at for weeks and Helen and I spent so many hours trying to come up with Dumbledore’s not dead
theories. I feel weird about it now, when I’m doing a re-read and get to HBP, I
get a knot in my tummy. It’s a weird mixture of comfort and pain that I never
quite know how to deal with. OH GOD I AM SO DISMAL I APOLOGISE.

I woke up one morning to a barrage – I’m not even
exaggerating here, an actual barrage - of
texts off Jen about Rosamund Lupton’s Sister. She was
all I KNOW IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT JO BUT THIS BOOK. So I read it, because
that’s what I do when Jen recs a book, I find it and I read it. I couldn’t put
it down. I read it in one sitting. It’s always a book that makes me think of
that – of waking up that morning and wondering what the hell had happened, I swear, I thought something had happened that was bad times because so many of the text messages. Ha.

You know when sometimes you discover a book that makes you
forget how to breathe? That sucks the air from your lungs and leaves you
gasping, hands curled into fists, wondering how life will ever be the same
again? I read If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
when my boyfriend was drag racing one weekend in Stratford. 2012 I think. We had an old VW
Camper back then, and I unfolded the bed and read this and ate skittles and was
totally and completely blown away. It changed how I felt about pretty much
everything and I didn't know what to do with myself because how could it be so good? I’ve been reading books like they were
going out of fashion my whole life and I had no idea that it was possible to do
something like this with just words. Every time I went back to the racetrack
after that I’d think about this book.

if nobody speaks of
remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?

To Kill A Mockingbord. God, I
love it. Is there anyone that didn’t study it in school? It feels like one of
those books that’s going to be on the curriculum for all of time. Rightly so as
well. I loved English at school, it was my subject, the
one where I felt like I could really be myself, where it all made sense. Let's not talk about maths and science and all the nonsense. It was all about English, all of the time. We
studied TKAM for GSCE, obvs, and that time spent reading it, discussing it,
writing about it, was probably the highlight of my education. My English teacher was amazing. I loved her. I still have the
copy I bought for school, with all my notes in the margins, all the key
paragraphs underlined in HB pencil. I’ve read it so many many times since then, so very many you don't even know and every time there’s still a part of me that feels like that fifteen year old
kid in an English Lit lesson; no other two words can make my chest tighten like
hey Boo.

The Blind Assassin reminds me of the
first time I lived alone, in 2001 I think, in this scummy bedsit over the top
of a corner shop. God but it was awful. I only lived there a couple of months
but it was long enough *shudder* I hated it, hated it. It was so horrible. It’s part of the reason I am
so hung up on moviong somewhere amazing now I think: I swore I’d never live
like that again. AWFUL. I read The Blind Assassin when
I lived there, it was the first time probably that I read Margaret Atwood and
thought but how do you even words. This book was
a freaking revelation I swear to God. It’s so good.
It’s my favourite of hers, still. Will always be I imagine because I can’t
imagine anything else ever coming close.

I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s when
I was in high school. It’s the book that instantly came to mind actually, when
Jen tagged me in this, because it’s a book that instantly makes me think about
my fourteen year old self, how I saw myself and how this book made me feel. I
was a bit lost and a bit afraid of pretty much everything and a bit desperate
to find my place when I was a teenager (I am totally not Team Teenage Years, at
all. Being a teenager was a great big pile of elasticated granny pants) and I totally fell for Holly Golightly and her devil may care attitude.
She was fashionable and confident and ultra cool: she would never
be caged by convention in the way that I totally felt like I was, she’d never
be judged for not being pretty or trendy or popular enough. Holly Golightly had
zero fucks to give. She’d never waste time and tears on what other people
thought of her and when everything felt like it was going to shit, I pretended
I was just like Holly Golightly, Travelling. I was a little bit like ‘when I
grow up I want to be…’ which, well it’s a bit crackers isn’t it, given that she
had no job and was actually pretty damn lonely and probably as lost as I was –
it’s interesting actually, how differently I perceive the whole book when I
read it now.Never love
a wild thing. I still love that quote.

I found Richard Siken by way of the internet back in 2012,
like you do, (HOW DID WE EVER BEFORE THE INTERNETS THOUGH) and got my hands on a copy of his poetry collection Crush as soon as I possibly could. I read it in bed, I think
Ian must’ve been away because I was very definitely on my own. I had a cup of
hot milk that went cold, forgotten about on the beside table because this book
engulfed me entirely. (It went so cold it had that gross out milk skin and I was very nearly sick in my mouth.) It’s the kind of book that crawls under your skin, makes
it’s self comfortable and stays there, the kind of book that hit me like a
suckerpunch, right in the chest. It gave me goosebumps and it broke my heart
and it moved me in a way that even now I can’t quite put into words. I kept a
copy of it by my bed for a year, for a while I even carried it around in my bag
because weirdly I couldn’t stand to be parted from it. It ruined me, this book,
and it ruined my hot milk too.

Little Women means Christmas in
a way that nothing else does. It’s more Christmas to me than my Christmas tree
even. I’ve read it every Christmas since I was 8. That’s 24 years good gracious
I am old. I read it for the first time on Christmas Eve, curled up on our
settee. The house was all trimmed up and my Mum was playing her new Cliff
Richard Christmas album – and how mental that I remember that still – and there
was this amazing new book, blue and hard-backed and lovely with this character
called Josephine who loved to read and write and that was it. I was sold. I’ve
read it every Christmas since. Not always on Christmas Eve, as I’ve gotten
older it usually coincides with trimming up, but still every damn year. I’ll
still be reading it when I’m 80. Just watch me.

Between Shades of Gray was a book
I read in Cornwall
in the summer of 2011. The Ex-Boyfriend and Ihad rented out this little beach hut-esque holiday cottage for a
fortnight and it was a glorious time of sunshine and cider and coastal paths
and lots of cheese. I always eat so much cheese on holiday. So much cheese and so much cider. I started read this book on the beach at St Ives and felt
my heart splinter. I was in bed when I finished it, I remember turning to him
and saying ‘oh, I think I’m sad’ and then just sobbing. He wondered what the
hell was even happening. We could have had a caucus race I cried that much.A SEA OF TEARS.

Have you read Jonathan Livingstone
Seagull? If the answer is no, then you should. You totally should. I
first read it in 2002. I say I read it; it was actually read to me. It was one
of my boyfriend’s favourite books; he was a bit of a Richard Bach fanboy truth
be told and when he found out I’d never even heard of the guy he looked at me
in horror, dug his copy of this book out of his bedside drawer and threw it at
me. Then, ‘actually’ he said, ‘this is the kind of book that needs to be read
aloud’ and he did. It was winter and we lived in this tiny old cottage and the
cold seemed to seep through the gaps in the brick; it never felt warm even with
the heating on full. I was still so young and I thought that those days would
stretch on into forever. We curled up in bed, I wore his t-shirt and his socks
and I rested my head on his chest so I could feel the rumble of his voice as he
spoke and he played with my hair.We
read two chapters a night and it was one of my most favourite things. That was
a side of him that not many people got to see, this soft and affectionate guy
that would play with my hair and read to me in bed, that would kiss me hello
every time he walked in the house and sing George Benson songs to me in the
car. It’s one of those memories that I treasure now he’s not here any more and
this book always reminds me that he was so much more than the ‘don’t give a
damn’ façade that he presented to the world, that I was one of the few that he
let see him with his guard down. It’s a book that sums up for me all that he
was, and all that he wanted to be, and it’s a book that will always be
cold-nosed whiskey kisses and the rolling timbre of his voice and the feeling
of belonging.

So tell me: what are the books that always take you to that particular time and place?

Oh, but I do so love doing my book haul posts, books make me
so happy all of the time, even though the sheer number of them I actually own
terrifies me slightly. Ha. I’ve spent a fair amount of time researching
bookshelves this past few weeks lemme tell you!

So, June.

Alice in Zombieland just showed up at
work one day at the start of June. I know, right?
Random. I have no idea who sent it – usually random bookish parcels arriving at
work are from Jen, but not this one. I wondered if it might be a review copy
from a publisher, but those usually go to my home address and IT IS A MYSTERY.
I was intrigued and a little scared and you know I’m not going to lie – what I
have read of this book since has only made me more afraid. Still, the cover’s
cute and I’m never one to say no to free books….

The Sin Eater’s Daughter was my
treat to myself because…..actually there was no reason. This book keeps popping
up on blogs I follow and you know how I always need to know what all the fuss
is about and that really was that. S’about this girl, engaged to a prince, who
kills everyone she touches which you know, makes her life pretty shitty, but
then, there’s A Boy…. I picked it up at the same time as Aristotleand Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe which is also
EVERYWHERE. The cover to this one is lush. L U S H. & the story is pretty
darn cute too although not as good as all the hype had led me to believe it
might be.

Reasons to Stay Alive. I love Matt Haig a little bit, mostly
because his tweets make me want to drive to his house and high five him. This
book has been so highly praised by everyone in the world ever, and you know, it
sounds like the kind of book that all the people every where should read. I’ll
let you know if I actually think that’s true once I have indeed read it!!

I bought Uprooted because I read an ARC and LOVED IT and I
have this thing about wanting to own actual physical copies of the books I
love. I also bought the Penguin Special Editions copy of The Bloody
Chamber (I talk about that a bit here) because LOOK AT IT.

I’ve also got review copies of the following:

The Church of Marvels I AM SO
EXCITED ABOUT THIS YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW. SO EXCITED. Or rather, you probably do
because I’ve talked about it before but still. Excited.

Timebomb was released on June 18th.
It’s the first in a new YA time travel trilogy, it moves between 2141,the present day and 1640 and it sounds like
it might be right up my street. It’s my next read actually, so watch this
space!

Alan Stoob Nazi Hunter. Huh. I
don’t know what to expect of this one, or even much about it other than Joanne
Harris of Choclat fame reportedly says Alan Stoob is to Nazis what Inspector Clouseau is to jewel thieves.
He's a marvellous comic creation, and deserves his own series of movies. I
guess we shall just have to wait and see.

A Year of Marvellous Waysis the new
Sarah Winman, also released on June 18th. The success of When God Was A Rabbit (which I liked a whole lot) means this
is uber highly anticipated and it actually sounds like it’s going to be really
lovely. It’s all about this old lady called Marvellous who sits by the sea and
looks for something through her telescope. She doesn’t know what she’s looking
for, just that it’s out there. She ends up saving this soldier who washes up in
the creek by her house, reeling from world war 2, in a bad way and trying to
fulfil another soldier’s dying wish. I think it will make me feel all the
things.

Ebook wise I was fairly reserved. Yep, I know. Just four:

What Milo Sawwhich I’ve
heard all the good things about: a BIG story about a little
boy who sees things differently. I’m really looking forward to it. It's released in paperback in August.

One, which if you believe all you hear
is going to be THE BOOK OF THE SUMMER. It has a publication date of August 27th
I think and it’s about conjoined twins who can’t afford to carry on being
homeschooled and have to venture into the bog bad world. I have all the Wonder type feels here and I am so desperately hoping it
lives up to all the hype – seriously, so many people are saying so many things
about this book. Do the pre-ordering thing, do it do it.

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT. June. Next Monday I’m going to
(belatedly) talk about the books I’m pleased are being released in July, and
there’s quite a handful so you know, BE HERE. Also, I need to review The Quality of Silence and also Suicide
Notes from Beautiful Girls so next week should be a bloggy week.

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About

A bookworm in her mid-30's who likes sunshine and snow covered mountains and the cold side of the pillow and being the little spoon. Writes book reviews more akin to coffee with friends than any intellectual book club. Binge watcher who has been known to use holiday days to stay in her pyjamas under a blanket watching Ugly Betty and who thinks nothing will ever be as sad as Billy on Ally McBeal although some things come close. Does not believe in the term guilty pleasures - you do you, you gorgeous creature. A happy, sleepy, over-thinker.

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“He said, "I'm going to use that in something one day." And he wrote it down on a napkin and put it in his back pocket...

About Me

Josephine. Mid-30’s (still not sure how to adult). Bookworm. Lover of coffee and marmite and pad thai. Hardly ever eats breakfast. Has too many copies of Alice in Wonderland. Also loves skiing and the sea and road-trips and laughter. Terrified of wasps.
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